Coast of Patagonia
Index
Search
Contact us
eagerly offered to visit the ship; but I did not chuse to indulge more than eight of the number. They jumped into the boats with the joy and alacrity of children going to a fair, and having no intention of mischief against us, had not the least suspicion that we intended any mischief against them. They sung several of their country songs while they were in the boat, and when they came on board did not express either the curiosity or wonder which the multiplicity of objects, to them equally strange and stupendous, that at once presented themselves, might be supposed to excite. I took them down into the cabbin, where they looked about them with an unaccountable indifference, till one of them happened to cast his eyes upon a looking-glass: this however excited no more astonishment than the prodigies which offer themselves to our imagination in a dream, when we converse with the dead, fly in the air, and walk upon the sea, without reflecting that the laws of nature are violated; but it afforded them infinite diversion: they advanced, retreated, and played a thousand tricks before it, laughing violently, and talking with great emphasis to each other. I gave them Some beef, pork, biscuit, and other articles of the ship’s provisions: they eat, indiscriminately, whatever was offered to them, but they would drink nothing but water. From the cabbin I carried them all over the ship, but they looked at nothing with much attention, except the animals which we had on board as live stock: they examined the hogs and sheep with some curiosity, and were exceedingly delighted with the Guinea hens and turkies; they did not seem to desire any thing that they saw except our apparel, and only one of them, an old man asked for that: we gratified him with a pair of shoes and buckles, and to each of the others I gave a canvas bag, in which I put some needles ready threaded, a few slips of cloth, a knife, a pair of scissars, some twine, a
 |
Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, page 376, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/376.html